♪ >> Election Day is November 8th in this midterm ballot is chalk full of offices at every level of government and to propose constitutional amendments.

Kentucky secretary of state Michael Adams share some important information about voting rules, election integrity and more.

That's now on connections.

♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome and thank you for joining us for connections today.

I'm Renee Shaw.

The countdown to the general election is on and there are some important reminders before you head to the polls that we're sharing today, Kentucky secretary of state Michael Adams oversees elections in Kentuckyian updates us on any new voting rules.

How he's addressing questions about voter fraud.

>> And why he's seeking a second term secretary of state.

Mister Secretary, thank you for the bag.

Good to have you back.

So we're going to go down like a how to Lesotho cable.

No, we do not apply again and what they need to do this year's ballot November's long one right?

I guess a lot of sever the longest ever could be a okay is on it.

So tell us about these people, the constitutional amendments.

>> So I tell people and those sides if you're voting straight ticket, that's great that you're right.

But you're not done yet.

There's plenty more to vote on.

That doesn't get covered by a straight ticket pool.

So you have the U.S. Senate race, U.S. House races.

You have the legislature.

Of course you have every county race in the state.

You've got basically every city race in the state and then every judicial race in the state and then you're still not done in the still have constitutional amendments are school board this a truck full about this year?

Yeah.

>> So the constitutional amendments to constitution.

There are 2 constitutional amendment.

One is about legislative sessions and kind of changes.

Some of that.

And that's like 740 forward.

So talk to us about why so much language on the ballot when it comes to these proposed constitutional amendments.

>> Well, for probably 100 years by law, the secretary of state and the attorney general would agree to some sort of brief summary explaining and in plain English for voters what this amendment would do.

That's attorneys general and secretary of state did across party lines for generations due to a Supreme Court ruling right before I took office in late 2019.

We have that authority no longer.

Now under this court ruling, we have to list every single word of the amendment.

We can't just summarize it for the voters.

And I understand the rationale for that.

But the problem is it actually is going to cost our state a lot of money.

It's going to be the bouts longer is going potentially deter people from voting on the issue because you have the patience or understanding to go through some 144 words of constitutional law right?

>> And so those are on the back made.

Maybe people are just fatigued.

And if they don't understand the wording, I mean, the wording know, you know, you understand law that year, your gig, but for the average voter, is it in language they can understand?

>> Sort you should be a law degree to But unfortunately, it's very technical wording because that's what's necessary to amend the Constitution.

The Constitution is constitutional law.

And so you got to have precise wording in there.

So it is not very accessible language.

But just to briefly summarize on television.

The effect of this amendment, if it's approved by the voters would give the legislature more flexibility.

It would allow them to basically bank some days to later in the year.

In case there's an emergency they can call themselves back in.

They would have the authority to extend their sessions beyond what's in the Constitution, right?

But they have more flexibility in scheduling.

>> Right.

And it doesn't prohibit the governor from calling a special session.

As you heard this, a lot of it would replace the governor's authority.

It does not so the General Assembly can come back after they've voted 3 fascinates chamber and this speaker and the Senate president could decide which days to come back later.

And but it does not and it changes the end date.

So there's no end date to a session now, not April 15th and even years, not March.

30th in there.

Odd years.

but it doesn't mean that there's going to be a year-round legislature.

>> No, I wouldn't see it that way.

They still have a tight, a regulation on how often they can What time of year they meet is really sort of beside the point.

The question is, how many days can they meet?

Because there's a constitutional requirement to take 3 days to pass a bill.

So when you have a limit on how many days they can meet, you have a limit on how much they can actually do.

And that's something that they've written in there themselves.

But that's not something new that they're putting on.

>> So that amendment comes before the abortion amendment ask if should there be a constitutional right in Kentucky to an abortion funding of it?

Yes or no.

So and before we started taping, you said because of the length of number one, some people may just inadvertently skip number 2 are just not paying attention.

>> Yeah, I get a lot of questions.

What are my predictions on amendment to the Pro Life Movement it could be us a price because of a couple of factors.

One, the no on 2 sides out raise the yes on 2 side.

Both sides are on television, but the by certainly more aggressive on the no side because they have more resources and the other situation is that number 2 comes after number one by law.

We have to put these in the order that we received from Legislature.

Right?

And I received the number one before I received number 2.

So the big question is, will voters go through a very long ballot?

All these federal races, all these judicial races could congressional legislative school boards, City county and then get to the bottom.

And then read through a long diatribe about that and that wind and then still read on him.

But on number 2, now they can certainly job ahead.

Look at number 2.

I don't know what they'll do.

That's a good question, right?

Certainly the no side has been more motivated and more engaged on television.

It's possible that they can get their voters to vote no.

And the site will be a gun on that and have less enthusiasm or knowledge about it.

So it's to could be a surprise.

>> Some of us like to think that the constitutional amendments might drive greater and higher voter turnout.

Is that true or false?

>> We don't really have an experience with that in Kentucky.

We've not really seen the the bottom of the ballot drive turnout.

Historically the top of the ticket drives to turn out.

That's why so far at least we're projecting a fairly low turnout this election because at least to date, the top of the ticket hasn't really drawn a lot of attention.

A lot of outside funding and so forth.

It's been kind of a quiet race has been the public polling in the Senate race since January.

I think so.

That's usually what you go on.

And people tend to come out for the top of the ticket, not the bottom right?

>> I think perhaps there might be more interested in some of these judicial races.

You know, there are weather won't be on the same ballot, but there's 2 Kentucky Supreme Court races in northern Kentucky, Bowling Green area.

The Franklin Circuit Court so and there's a lot of activity of late with some political action committees being involved and those races.

So judicial races might get a little bit more love this time Thank.

>> But just talking to someone who's been in politics a long time.

I don't know the even turns out to go vote in a judicial race and thus the personally angry at the judge.

But I certainly think that in terms of persuasion, these are the races that tend to have the least People tend to be the least informed about people running for judge.

And so if someone is benefiting from an outside expenditure to raise their name ID and raise their profile and to find them a little bit can make a difference of persuasion.

>> So people and you might say this, I'm not trying to be an advocate, but if people really want to arm themselves and be ready to go in there and make those decisions quickly in the voting booth.

You can get a sample ballot.

It's available on your Web site.

That's right.

Our Web site has a sample ballot for every voter in Kentucky.

I used it myself yesterday so I can figure out who would vote for it's a day to get this in any election, but especially now because I had to print out a 2 page legal paper, 11 by 14 ballot to see what my bouts can look like and to be able to look at it and see what my choices are in the research.

Those people.

>> Paper ballots this time right?

>> Yes, every county will be on paper ballots this time.

It's a big change from just a few years ago.

>> Do you think that that will elongate to voting experience there or what do you think about the time that will be And there's 2 minutes that you have right to kind of cast your vote now.

And when the ballot this lawn that seem so not a whole lot of time to make it.

>> Mike, you're right.

I want voters to be informed before they show up and already have the decisions made if they possibly can.

There is a limit by statute of how long people are supposed to be in the booth.

I hope that we can be lax on It turnout was low and there aren't lines.

Maybe we can do that.

>> Are they are they really checking for that?

I mean, there's not a poll worker who sitting there with the time >> No, in 30 years, some positive.

Never seen anyone do that.

If it were to happen to be in the high turnout year like this one.

>> Right.

And for those who might have special accommodations, those are made for folks who might have some type of disability to help them complete the ballot.

>> Absolute.

There's county clerk Republicans going discriminate against some of the disability, enforce them after 2 minutes.

Yeah.

What do you expect based on history?

Well, there's a couple histories that we look at.

One is what's the registration look like?

Is there a surge toward the end?

We have seen that we saw about 20,000 voters register.

>> In September, that was a big spurt.

This the biggest spur since September of 2020.

But to put that into context in 2020, we had about 50,000 new voters sign up.

We had about 20,000 this time.

So what that suggests to me is that we'll have a healthy turnout, but not at the level that we saw in 2020.

I think it will be more like a typical midterm model summer in the 40's.

Yeah.

>> Absentee ballots, so clarify for us.

The rules about that and when they must be and to the office.

>> So we've had about 53,000.

Kentuckians apply for absentee ballot as of the end of last week.

You've got until October 25th to submit your application.

We've streamlined this.

Now you can do that online ad go vote DOT K Y dot Gov.

You can request your ballot efficiently that way.

But you can also track it online at the website and see your ballot is in the process has been sent to you that they get back.

They counted or not.

That's all information you can get 24, 7 from your smartphone.

I do want to encourage people couple things.

Number one, make sure you get that ballot back to us when the polls close because we don't have a 3 day window after the fact a grace period this time I like and in 2020, 2020 right, for obvious reasons.

We're back to the default of having it to us in the polls close.

We can count those.

The other thing to remind people were informed.

People is put extra postage on your absentee ballot.

If you're not going as the drop box, if you're going to mail it back.

But on plenty of postage, right?

Because these are heavy ballots.

It's a long A lot of words to long, heavy piece of paper, right?

So I'd say put 2 or even 3 stamps, 2 or 3 >> stamps.

That's an investment of what is to stand now $0.60 or something like that.

Yes, since testing, how much I actually mail.

Yeah.

So if you're doing that, get that done, the curing process from ballots that have something that could be a mess with that.

What's that about?

So that we implemented >> in 2020, we've made permanent by statute in 2018, we discarded about 10,000 absentee ballots statewide.

That was about 7 and a half percent of the absentee ballots.

I'm not criticizing any by the fall.

The law that was in place at the time.

But the process was that the signature on the envelope for the ballot didn't match the voter's signature on her driver's license or even her voter registration card, then they just threw it out with no questions asked.

Now we actually check now by statute.

We actually contacted voter and verify its the voter.

That's good for access because we're basically in franchising people that would have had their ballots thrown out.

But it's good for security to because if it wasn't that person, we want to know about it.

You're right.

>> Early voting, this is different from November 2020.

We're in the pandemic.

3 days of early voting.

It includes a Saturday this time.

Tell us more about that.

>> So there are 10 days to vote total.

There's, of course, Election day, November 8 from 06:00AM to 06:00PM.

There are 3 days of early voting.

No excuses necessary by statute that Thursday, Friday and Saturday before election per this session of the bill that we worked on.

There's also an additional 6 days of what's called in-person absentee.

If you want to vote in person, if it's important to you, but you can't vote on the other days, you can come to the court to the county clerk's office and vote on a machine for 6 days before that.

So 10 days to live.

But person of that year.

>> Choice and this is a compromise cause.

Some still wanted to have the 2 to 3 weeks that we had before.

But that's more time lapse kind of voting and has posted the snapshot, which I think many people would say is better for this kind of democratic process.

I think I think we found the sweet spot.

I think one day to vote is way too stingy.

>> and almost every other state our country has moved on from that decades ago.

That's just unrealistic in a modern society.

But I also think that having 2 or 3 week long elections distorts the outcomes in favor of people with high name ID or a lot of money hurts the Charles because of the world as it did probably cost him his race in 2020.

So you want to have a fair system doesn't discriminate.

I think the sweet spot is to have in our case several days to vote still but not weeks and weeks of voting voting centers available.

Right.

And I did want to ask about an eastern Kentucky in these flood ravaged counties.

>> How is how different is that going to be or what kind of special accommodations are needed to be made if any?

>> actually, police to that I was able to work with the governor last month on this or to the close.

Look at this.

And in fact, most of the locations in eastern Kentucky in the flood zone have been able to reopen in some instances.

All the precincts are open, which is pretty remarkable and a testament to the great work of those county clerks in some of those situations.

They've had to move the location that a school that was flooded and had to move 2 different location.

But Im breath it in Leslie, in clay, in these counties that were hit so hard, they actually have pretty a pretty voting options.

Good, good.

>> So let's talk about county clerks there on the front lines of election security and administration in Kentucky.

We know that that there was a recent report by WFP L public radio.

They reported that the day that a day before we had spoken, that county clerk offices across Kentucky have seen a rise in open records request ahead of the midterm elections and they say they there's field by conspiracy theories and to talk to us about the pressures of county clerks.

The problem with getting poll workers and even you, Mister Secretary being a target of unpleasant.

Comments and threats.

>> Put this into some perspective in 2020, which was a hellacious you here for the election community.

For me, the state Board of elections, the county clerks as brutal as a year.

That was when we lost to county clerks that said, I just can't do this anymore and basically walked off the job.

This year.

We lost 9 and then this account, the ones that didn't run for re-election this year, it's up to about 23.

If you count all of them, I'm just in the ones that walked off.

The job is 9, 9 in 2022, we thought after we survived 2020, it was all going to be sunny outside and and the problems.

But unfortunately, it's actually been a harder year, certainly on the morale of our clerk's compared to 2020, which is unfortunate.

>> Right.

And May's County clerks, of course, they're overseeing elections if they actually might be on the ballot.

So is there any concern about malfeasance on their part?

Is that a part of what's fueling some of the conspiracy theories?

>> Know that nothing is based on any sort of ethical allegation or anything of that nature and all the people that have brought lawsuits against us or made allegations against us or not.

People that ran for Clark are supporters of the candidate for Clark who lost this really been none of that.

This is largely directed from outside our state, the so-called Pillow Guy has been a big part of this.

He's got a website with wording that people can borrow to send missives to our offices.

He did a video and called for his minions to quote The Bard us and unfortunately they have.

And that's been a big factor in the poor morale of our clerk.

So I don't remember his name actually, but I can see his face, the pillow guy.

This is my pillow.

>> Michael Dell, Mike Lindell.

Correct?

So and he is a Trump supporter and so talk to us about little bit the kind of attacks that he's been lobbying.

>> Well, he's got a partner in a state legislator They work pretty closely and basically what he does is he makes sort of reckless allegations with no basis, in fact, and and directs people who are watching as his U 2 program to to act on those things.

And so we've got a lot of requests that just are total job rich.

They don't make any sense at all and will call the Kasich will say what are you asking for those that I don't know.

But Mike Lindell told me to send you this.

In another instance, we have a legislator who's made requests of all 120 of the clerks and timed it right for when they were preparing for the general election.

And they've spent weeks producing voluminous records for and she hasn't even pick them up.

So it looks like the intent is to disrupt our process.

Not actually look for anything.

>> So is this the Oldham County I know there's an county race that involves the current House speaker and that was a contested by that challenger.

So tell us where that stands.

>> So we were sued 6 times by people that are in for various offices in the primaries.

Congress statehouse, states, Senate demanding recounts 5 of the 6 people lost by very wide margins.

2030, 40, even 60 points.

Some of those we were able to get dismissed.

Some of those were not able to get dismissed.

And we want to head into the recounts.

So we've done to so far one in northern Kentucky, one in central Kentucky and both times the recount proved it that the machines worked correctly that they accurately counted the votes, that there was no programming from the Chinese or Venezuela or whoever is in the conspiracy theory at the time we actually found the court found that the machine counts are more accurate than the hand counts because the hand counts to verify the machines actually changed every time to write why we moved away from hand counts in the 1940's toward machine count because of the honest mistakes also has a camera there, right?

Operator error and the human form.

>> Election security, you know your slogan when you're an and you stand by is making it easier to vote and harder to cheat.

And the May primary were there any incidents of cheating?

>> Well, there certainly were none that were that were found to be actually demonstrated.

When you have an instance.

I think it was in Boone County of a voter who attempted to vote twice that actually was a case.

It was criminally brought him prosecuted.

That voter was and it's a jury decision.

And so I I can't speak to what their rationale was ice and that the jury decided this person in an honest mistake that this person was older and maybe just was confused.

But you're talking about one case of a large number of votes cast in a statewide election when that's all they had to go on.

And that's the closest that we get to vote for this.

A pretty clean election right?

>> Election deny years.

A new lexicon.

And now vernacular.

And you've taken some heat twenty-twenty when you worked with the governor and you develop this plan to make it easy or easier to vote during the pandemic and even embrace some of the reforms that have come along.

And you have been a proponent for, you know, that our elections are fair and and run with integrity and you've taken some heat for that.

As you seek reelection.

What are your concerns the kind of challenges and and rhetoric that you may encounter?

>> Well, I do have a primary challenger who is that that wing of the party, if you election deny or that's just the price you pay.

Unfortunately for for public service.

I think it's unusual for any grip on the Republican that it's unusual for any Republican officeholder not have challengers.

Even Rand Paul had 4 or 5 challengers and he's pretty conservative.

So I think it's just part of being an incumbent.

You've got one of the party that largely doesn't like government and they that automatically trust an officeholder.

And so you're fighting kind of a 2 front war with the other party in the general in your own in the spring.

>> But it can cross the threshold threats of physical and bodily harm.

And that's a whole different dynamic.

We encountered Yeah, unfortunately, we had a quiet couple of years.

>> Where that that kind of went away and in August at the high point with all these recount law suits ongoing us intervening to try to put into those plus the pillow And and so forth.

It was kind of a a perfect storm in August September.

And we saw unfortunate some more of that.

I had a case and rougher to the FBI, but it's gotten quiet again.

Yeah.

>> And you're still are going to the office.

And and the county clerks who are charged with doing their jobs as you do yours.

And that's part of your job assignment.

>> Yeah, and I'm really glad to say that unlike a lot of states, the people that are running for county clerks in our state are are pretty much universally really good, very qualified people.

Other states have seen a rush of election and wires running not just from my office, but also for county clerk wanting to take over the system.

Son infiltrate.

We didn't really see that in Kentucky.

We had one such individual run in the primary in a part of the state.

That is unfortunately very subject misinformation.

And he got get this 3 the wind.

So if they can't win in northern Kentucky, probably can't win elsewhere.

But in any event, we're going to have really good clerks were losing the 23 or so of them, which is unfortunate.

But fortunately on the upside in those races, you've got generally the deputies of these Clark stepping up to succeed them.

We're going to ask about that quality, solid, capable people run with some institutional knowledge, job, right?

You're not going to be complete newbies in the fight to come in with water ideas that may or may not fly.

>> Yeah, these are experienced people that have been through the paces.

They've watched their boss is not just deal with running elections, been dealing with this information and all the other problems that we face these days.

So these people that they have the guts to step up after what they've seen the last couple of years.

God bless and it will be.

>> Great.

They are made a bad right.

Let's talk about poll county clerks.

23, you could be losing.

But what about poll workers and you found some creative ways to try to recruit them.

>> Yeah, I actually testified to the legislature before I was sworn in or after I won my election that we've got a crisis brewing with respect to pull worker recruitment and retention.

It's nothing that's wrong with the system.

Per se.

It's just that generate a generationally older people.

Our aging out and it's older generations that volunteer that have a real specific Keith Thos and my generation's Generation X just doesn't younger generations are working.

Well, okay.

That too.

gauge in this is all well documented.

Bowling alone.

Books have been written last 20 years have shown that we've seen a drop in voting, a drop in civic engagement, a drop in volunteering across the board.

Sasha selection, specific.

So in 2020, especially with our older folks it was not reasonable to ask them to come back in the era of mass COVID and no vaccine yet and asked him to sit there for a 13 hour day and get voters in and out.

And so we had to be very reliant on younger people.

And we were and we found ways to reach younger people.

I think the most productive way to was to partner with distilleries and breweries wineries.

Yeah.

And this is a way to reach a totally different demographic of people.

Is it working?

It actually is working, OK?

We've not seen the type burst of interest that we saw in 2020 because candidly we got a ton of media coverage for doing this.

And that really helped.

But we have seen a lot of older folks come back to 2020, all so between 2020's, folks and people that did this before 2020, we're in pretty good state.

I've not heard of any counties in the state that are now desperate for poll workers that we have.

Even the ones that are asking for help are asking for all from.

That's case will mix up sick on Election Day.

So I think we're in a pretty good spot.

We also have about a quarter of our counties that have opened up all of the precincts, which is a good sign.

>> That is a good sign.

Voter registrations urges.

You mentioned that earlier, but also independents, the fastest growing political affiliation and Kentucky.

Tell us about those numbers and the fact that the Republicans were able to flip and now they outnumber Democrats and voter registration.

Although voter performance also, it was a different story.

They were already probably king there.

>> Yes, what we've seen in August was about 10,000 new registrants and September.

About 20,000 new registrants, a net increase of 16 was sweet veteran people being case and taken off the rolls it's a big search of the 16,000 net new voters, 10,000 Republicans, 4,000, independents in 2000, are Democrats.

So obviously as Republican I love seeing my party succeed.

But the truth is the independents consistently.

I think every month I've been in office have been proportionally the fastest growing voter bloc.

Even with 10,000 Republicans, the independents have registered at twice the rate that Republicans have When you count the 4,000 against their existing registration.

So the big questions today vote, what we've seen in looking at independent super just or that way since I've been in office is the disproportionately their younger voters.

45 1% of them are 18 to 29 in that in that age group.

That's also the group, the least And so the big question is, do they actually come out and vote if they do today?

Vote for that could be some real surprises, maybe not in November, but certainly down the road.

When you consider this young blocking when they vote or not.

Yeah.

>> Well, Secretary Mike lot, I'm just going to pleasure.

We could still talk more about all lots of things.

But we thank you for your time today.

And we remind people did something to make a big play to get active.

What would you say in the Senate?

Don't forget to vote.

Don't forget to vote in the Senate.

Better wise words and on.

Thank you so much for joining us.

K S O S DOT K Y dot Gov.

If you want to see those sample ballots, go there that help you prepare.

So when you don't want to, you can make a wise decision.

We thank you for joining us for connections today.

You can follow us on Facebook on Twitter.

Watch Kentucky Edition each week night at 6.30, Eastern 5.30, central.

Listen to our podcast.

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Take really good care.

So long.

♪ >> So And 26 minutes a month.